Hanging Out to Dry
by Acepilot6
Summary: A sequel to Whatever Makes You Happy. Sometimes the greatest pleasures in life come from just being together, no matter what it is you're doing. Arnold:Phoebe. Reviews always appreciated.


**Hanging Out to Dry**  
Acepilot

8 - * - * - 8

"My hands are turning pruney," Arnold noted.

"Poor baby."

He rolled his eyes. "You're such a sympathetic girlfriend."

Phoebe grinned at him from the lounger they had set up and set her book down. "How about if I help?"

He shrugged. "I wouldn't want to drag you away from your very engaging stories."

She gave him a look suggesting reproach. "Most people would just say, 'Oh, thank you, greatest girlfriend in the history of the world, for offering to help me hang out the washing.'"

He put the basket of wet washing down and strolled across the roof to where his girlfriend lay on the overgrown seat, like most of the rest of the city enjoying the breakthrough of mid-spring in the Pacific Northwest. "Oh, thank you," he began, sliding down into the seat next to her, "greatest girlfriend in the history of the world," he continued, leaning in and kissing her on the nose, "for offering to help me hang out the washing."

"You're welcome," she said, "but suddenly I feel this heat is starting to get to me. I'm afraid I'll simply be unable to offer you any assistance."

He stuck his tongue out at her. "Tease."

She giggled and pulled him down for a proper kiss. "If it's any consolation, you look kind of hot hanging out sheets and things."

"It's very small consolation," he told her, "but I'll take what I can get."

The washing line that he'd installed on the roof of the Susnet Arms (with some misguided assistance from Ernie that, given his time again, he would rethink asking for) was today overburdened with what seemed like everyone in the building's sheets and a few of their shirts as well.

Arnold realised that there was simply no space left on the line for his own load, and so went back to the first load that had been hung out, starting to de-peg it and pull it down. In most places this would have been strictly against ettitquete, but he was landlord. If you couldn't pull certain privelieges, then what was the point. He turned to see his girlfriend still relaxing on the lounge, reading her book and - when she thought he wasn't looking - stealing glances at him.

He chuckled under his breath and waited.

Phoebe blinked, startled to suddenly find the world had turned a bizarre shade of off-white.

"Arnold!" she growled, yanking the sheet off herself.

Arnold was chuckling quietly away to himself. "Sorry, Pheebs. There are some things that are just too hard to resist."

"You need to develop some better self control."

He gave her his best, oh-please-forgive me smile.

She melted, just a bit.

She pulled herself up off the banana lounger, depositing the crisp, dry sheet in the basket into which Arnold was piling the finished washing. "Alright, how can I help?"

He rolled his eyes. "You don't have to help. I can do it on my own."

"I know," she said, "but the faster you get this finished the more time of this beautiful spring day I get to spend with you doing more enjoyable things than hanging out washing," she pointed out. "So I have something of a vested interest."

He looked at her for a moment, contemplating the offer, before giving her a goofy grin and pointing toward the rest of the dried washing. "Can you pull that down - up to the green sheets over there - while I hang this stuff?"

She nodded. "Sure."

Almost immediately, however, she ran into a problem.

While Arnold had gone through a rather dramatic growth spurt when they were in high school, hers had not been quite so impressive. The upshot being that while Arnold could quite comfortably reach the line above their heads -

"I'm too short," she muttered.

He turned to look at her, and immediately realised the miscalculation. "Ah. Yes. That hadn't quite occurred to me," he amditted.

She shook her head at him. "I'm sure."

In the end, she settled for passing him things and enjoying the sunshine.

He settled for taking them and enjoying her company.

"You know," he said, "you don't have to help me. If there's...other things you want to be doing?"

She shrugged. "My calendar is pretty free, Arnold."

"I just mean I appreciate that you're around here, helping me out and everything. I just hope I'm not...monopolising too much of your time."

She handed him a sheet but held onto it for a moment too long - it wasn't quite a tug-of-war but he could feel the resistance in her fingers. "What brought this on?"

Arnold stared at her, trying to find the words. In the end, he settled for, "Nothing, I guess. I just..."

"Do you not want me spending so much time around here?" she asked. "Has someone said something?"

"No!" he told her. "I love spending time with you and I'm glad you like coming here. Forget I said anything."

She looked at him slightly suspiciously, but eventually lowered her gaze and fished out a pillow case, which he obligingly hung out. As he was attempting to do so, however, a still-wet yellow-and-green striped sheet caught a gust of wind, leaving himself tangled in it. Phoebe chuckled as she pulled it off him. "Whose do you think this is?" she asked.

It was a distraction from the previous conversation and he knew it perfectly well, but he really didn't mind. "I think it's Hyunn's."

From there, they moved on with their conversation, from guessing who owned what piece of bedding, on to university and the increasing stresses related thereunto.

"I don't see how you find anything stressful about school," he pointed out. "You're a certified genius."

"I do what I can," she offered humbly.

He rolled his eyes. "Which is a lot more than most of us."

She grinned at him.

She did do rather a lot more than most of them, she knew - to the point of overwork. And he had, for years, been her escape valve. Their friendship had deepened after her and Gerald's disastrous, single date had brought about a change in their entire group: they'd gone from being two pairs of pals to a quartet of genuine friends.

Over their time in high school he had been the one she could drag to obscure cinema to unwind, the one who would cut her into the boarding house's rambunctious poker games (they wouldn't let her play blackjack because Ernie was convinced she could count cards, and Arnold suspected he was right), the one who listened when she needed to rant and scream.

"Did you read the newspaper this morning?" she asked.

"I would have," he pointed out, "but I think someone stole my copy."

"You could have had it when I was done with it," she pointed out. "Anyway, there was this story about how they've created this massive particle accelerator in Europe - this giant collider. And some people are scared if they turn it on it'll cause the end of the world."

"Hardly seems like something you'd want to create if that's the risk," Arnold suggested, hanging up another fitted sheet.

"I guess," she agreed, "but then...I don't know, but there's a certain poetry about the kind of risks we have to take to really understand the world."

The 'or ourselves' went unsaid.

Phoebe, Arnold reflected, could have gone anywhere when they finished high school. She had graduated top of their class, nearly top of the state, and had college acceptances rolling in from all corners of the globe. But she had stayed here, going to Swan - a fine school but nothing on the likes of Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Melbourne, or Oxford.

Part of him wondered if she'd stayed for him and their friends.

And wondered when she would realise that she could be doing so much more with her life than sitting on a roof and hanging washing out to dry.

"I can understand where you're going there," he agreed, slowly. "That's the last of it."

"Wonderful." She kissed him softly on the cheek. "What do you want to do with the rest of the afternoon?" she asked as they strolled over to the door that led back down into the house.

"Feel like catching a movie?"

She nodded. "Sure. Something...classic, I think. What's on at the Astor?"

"Breakfast at Tiffany's and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," he told her. "The generation gap series continues."

"Lead the way."

8 - * - * - 8

Hours later, sitting in the darkened theatre, Phoebe gave into the temptation and rested her head on Arnold's shoulder as Sidney Poitier exchanged dialogue with Spencer Tracy.

It was moments like this she loved best - when she could relax and be herself. She envied the way nothing seemed to rattle Arnold. He knew where he was going in life, what he wanted to do with the rest of it and what he needed to do now.

Always pushing herself to the limit and striving for perfection had left her tired and run down, and one day in high school she had looked at herself in the mirror and realised that, maybe, that was all that was left to her life. An endless, miserable quest for perfection. It didn't make her happy - she was working too hard for that and reaping none of the rewards. She didn't want that to be her life - because when she was at the top of the world, where was there left for her to go?

Then, one night, sitting in a park in some tiny little Northern Californian town on a road trip she had been dragged into without warning or preperation, she had found something...else. A friendship that had meant so much to her that could mean even more. She'd thrown reservations to the wind and gone with it.

She didn't really know where she was going in her life. But these days, she had a much better idea of what she wanted to do in the here and now. She could have gone to Harvard and pushed herself to the edge. But she'd rather be here, with people - him especially - who could pull her back from it. Going to movies and playing cards and hanging washing out to dry.

**8 - * - * - 8**

_**Author's Note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first fic, which I was extremely happy with. This one I have more mixed feelings about. I was wanting to focus very much on the motivations of these two characters but it's becoming obvious to me that sooner or later I'm going to have to address Helga and her...position in this relationship.**_

_**Anyway, as for this story, it's just an attempt to look at what we want out of life as opposed to what we're told we should want - what drives us and the like. I think Phoebe's quest to be the best would sooner or later start to get to her and I think she would find in someone like Arnold the driving force to keep her ambitions in academia in check with her desire for a happy life.**_

_**Anyway, I doubt this will be the last work I do in this fandom. Hope you enjoy it and I'll be back soon with more to share.**_

_**Acepilot 24/02/11**_


End file.
